As we enter a new era of politics, we hope to see that Obama has the courage to fight the policies that Progressives hate. Will he have the fortitude to turn the economic future of America to help the working man? Or will he turn out to be just a pawn of big money, as he seems to be right now.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

In horse racing, risk and love both part of sportGene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Every time I witness something like the breakdown of Eight Belles in theKentucky Derby, I tell myself I’ve watched my last horse race.Particularly after the filly’s gallant stretch run—for a long moment itappeared that she might actually catch Big Brown before the wire—thesight of veterinary vans encircling the stricken animal to preventspectators from seeing her euthanized was unbearable. Unlike some, Ican’t criticize NBC's coverage because I couldn’t watch it. My wife wascrying like a child. Partly that’s because we’re horse people, a passionwe came to relatively recently, causing us to rearrange our lives. I’vecome to feel that places that are no good for horses aren’t particularlygood for people. The most powerful surge of homesickness I’ve everexperienced struck me one humid evening in New York City some years ago.Walking up Fifth Avenue, I was surprised by the heavy, pungent odor ofhorses, the lineup of carriage horses along Central Park South waitingpatiently to take tourists clip-clopping through the park. I wanted tohail a cab to the airport on the spot.

Not that caring for a couple of middle-aged geldings gives me anyspecial insights into the so-called sport of kings. Well, maybe a few.

First, tragedies like Eight Belles’ death are an inherent part of horseracing. They can’t be entirely prevented. Riding horses under anycircumstances can be dangerous. When he first became acquainted with myquarter-horse Rusty, my farrier, an outspoken individualist like manypeople you meet around barns, warned that he was too headstrong andathletic for a middle-aged novice.

Problem was, I’d already bought him. Not long afterward, I’d saved Rustyfrom a near-fatal colic attack on a 104-degree July day. It’s hard to describe my emotions when he stopped while I was walking him out—he’d been staggering, in a daze—to nibble on clover. He was going to live. He drank something like eight half buckets of salty water at half-hour intervals that night, roughly 150 pounds of lost fluid.

So 10 years later, I reminded Tom that while Rusty had scared me half to death—stampeding with a deer herd toward a barbed-wire fence, for example he’d never actually hurt me, apart from black eyes caused by low branches.

“Yeah, well, you, me and him are all gettin’ old,” Tom allowed. “If hekills you now, it won’t be on purpose.”

So yeah, there’s a streak of fatalism among horse people. When you climbon an animal weighing between 1,000 and 1,300 pounds that can run 40 mphin bursts with a mind and will of its own, bad things can happen. I knowa barrel racer who had a horse fall on her, step on her face and breakseveral ribs last year. She won another event a week later. That said,horses aren’t anywhere near as life-threatening as, oh, the New JerseyTurnpike.

Second, people who imagine owners, trainers and jockeys cruel andindifferent—a New York Times columnist equated the sport tobullfighting—don’t know what they’re talking about. Horses get insideyou; they just do. Along with their speed, power and beauty—some of theearliest prehistoric cave paintings are of horses—they have vividpersonalities, strong emotions and no reticence about showing them.

I once asked a racetrack trainer if it was possible that my silly horseLucky actually feared a kind of orange butterfly that made him freezeup.

Of course, the real issue was whether Lucky trusted me. After he decidedhe did, he ignored the butterflies.

Third, 20 horses on a track with four turns isn’t so much a race as astampede. Especially since more than half have no realistic chance ofwinning and are there to showcase their owners’ ego and bankroll. Fourth, running a filly with 19 strange stallions in front of 157,000 drunks is unacceptably risky. Wild horses live in herds controlled by bullying stallions ready to throw down and fight savagely at the slightest challenge. Under the veneer of her training, Eight Belles must have been amped for flight, halfway expecting an equine riot and determined—this is the nature of racehorses—to show those swaggering punks her heels. She got all but one, didn’t she? It may have killed her. Last, and to understand it’s necessary to read a knowledgeable track writer like The Washington Post’s Andrew Beyer, thoroughbred race horses are as much a product of human genetic manipulation as a dachshund. In American racing, they’re breeding animals with too much muscle and bones like teacups. Something’s got to change, and it could require political intervention.

—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author andrecipient of the National Magazine Award.

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About Me

I enjoy photography and cats, and the people who enjoy photography and cats. Politics has become a second or third interest now that Tom Delay is going to jail and the GopPigS have lost the Congress. Even with the other big-business party, the Democrats, shape-shifting and pretending to stop the war, politics is a swamp that one should avoid.

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INFP - "Questor" says this about AJ: High capacity for caring. Emotional face to the world. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 4.4% of total population.